We've all heard the age old argument second only to the vi vs. emacs religious wars: FreeBSD Vs Linux. As a long time linux user, I decided that is was time I spent some time on the other side of the fence to see if it was any greener. Oh, and by the way, vi rules.

1) Installing portupgrade also installs portinstall. You can run "portinstall gaim" to automatically download and install gaim without changing directories to /usr/ports/net/gaim/, which is a real convenience. Even without portinstall/portupgrade, you can (and should) run 'make search key="BLAH"' to find the directory your requested port is in (the key is not restricted to name only). Portupgrade also sets up pkg_deinstall, which you can run like "pkg_deinstall gaim". There's also the portsclean command that cleans up your entire ports tree.

2) /usr/local/etc/pkgtools.conf allows you to set parameters for ports. You *can* set global port parameters like "NO_GUI=yes" in this manner, though different ports use different parameters (one port might use "WITHOUT_GUI=yes" instead). CFLAGS and more generic compiler options can also be changed in /etc/make.conf.

3) You don't need to recompile the kernel to add in support for sound, etc. A simple "kldload pcm" will do it. That said, if there's a driver I'm going to be using for sure, I tend to compile it in.

4) The installer is a tad weird, navigation-wise. I prefer the plaintext OpenBSD installer myself, I must say. However, you can almost always go back a step (or two, or three) by hitting escape or 'q', or simply by navigating through the options.